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I'm really amused at how much effort Foster spends at reaching out to Democrats AFTER the election which brought him defeat because he couldn't be bothered to reach out to Democrats. Even more amusing is the fact that now he blames Democrats for him losing after taking us completely for granted. He worked as hard at ignoring Democrats as he did alienating Hispanics. How'd that work out for ya?

What was that spread again? 60-40? Minnick didn't even get as many votes as Larry Grant, as an incumbent, against a virtual unknown with no money and limited resources. Well I reckon if Democrats were as low as 19%, as he alleges, that looks suspiciously like the margin. Mining for votes among Republicans clearly isn't a game winning strategy.

Wasn't it kind of independents that sunk his ass anyhow? I got at least 4 people who weren't Dems to go vote for Minnick in '08 (I REALLY hated Sali) ... pretty sure none of us did last time. He knew he was throwing away some Democrats; the gamble must have been that he'd pick up more racists who like crap policy among independents than he lost among Dems. And he lost ... he didn't get the votes he bet on. He's the one who screwed up. It's been what? Four months ... he's still pouting.

The Democratic party's prospects can ONLY have improved with him gone.

Foster was especially pissed off when we pointed out the fallacy of his Republican only strategy for getting votes, and he's been "reaching out" to us ever since. After it was too late, of course, and only to blame us for not voting for Walt, which is highly ironic since he keeps saying we didn't matter anyway. I could only wish the idea was to sacrifice a couple Democratic votes. The way he ran Walt's campaign was to disclaim all association with Democrats. And Democrats reciprocated. Not one of Idaho's top tier Democrats championed any policy important to Democrats. Democrats stayed home. If you want to lead us, you're gonna have to give us something to follow. We won't follow you to Fox.

Some people confuse this with a desire for party purity. Please don't make that mistake. For me this is NOT about wanting only purists. I'm a fan of Governor Schweitzer in Montana and he's pretty damn centrist. But he walks tall as a Democrat and ain't afraid to champion the cause when it fits for Montana. Idaho needs a Schweitzer.

For example, the recent effort in the legislature to criminalize the dying process is a political winner for every Democrat to oppose. That's a whole lot of government intrusion in a private matter. Not sure why we don't get daily press releases from party central on the shit coming out of the statehouse these days. They're missing tremendous opportunity to galvanize some righteous anger from disparate groups being marginalized by Republicans.

... to you know who, you know where. I had to listen to more of that "he may be a blue dog but he's our bull dog" BOOSHIT the other other night. I almost pulled out my karate chop.

I asked, "why should I pay $75 so I can listen to some bullshit speaker just piss me off? It's like paying $75 to get slapped in the face. And more importantly, why for the love of god didn't the party bring in a speaker we could ALL support? Surely surely surely there was someone better than this guy."

Know what I think? (Besides the obvious?) Everyone at that dinner is going to be a senior citizen. And that includes certain people under age 50 that I know are attending.

Good luck with that attitude. It worked so well last time. What I don't get is their pent up desire to yell at their own rank and file for failing to go along with their ridiculous wink wink nudge nudge conspiracy that if we just take it, they'll give us some progressive table scraps. People will vote for a leader and if they don't give them one, they'll find someone who makes sense to them. Or stay home on election day. Its not like they have a huge cadre of yellow dog Democrats outside of this blog.

Personally, there ain't nothing Shuler is selling that I want or would make me proud to call him my congressman. Seriously, I'm mighty flexible but they're over the threshold. Worse, their cowardice has them dismissing ideas that would and could be popular if they had a champion.

...to attack in the Idaho blogosphere, Serephin you are the last person who deserves it. In all the Minnick bullshit, you were mostly quiet. I feel bad about this, angry really, and I feel I should apologize to you for the animosity Mr. Foster must feel for all bloggers--the anger he took out on you.

I didn't do the yeoman's work you and MountainGoat did. I kept hoping Foster would pull his head out of his ass and lead Minnick on a more centrist path instead of sucking onto the Teabaggers like a remora on a shark (plus, I think Minnick's wife is good people, and felt bad about how this whole thing must have been on her). I must say, the first time I met Foster, when he took over the Executive Director job at the Idaho Democratic Party, he seemed like a nice guy. At the time, I had no idea he would turn out to be such a schmuck.

Foster's in the game for one person, and one person only -- himself. His overwhelming self-interest won't permit him to care about the welfare of other people, so it's good that his control over Democratic politics in Idaho has been lessened, although I'm sure there are still plenty of Blue Dogs in the state -- otherwise known as "Republicans with commitment issues" -- who take his calls. Now he can go back to sucking up to far-right Rethuglicans in the private sector.

Just came from Teamsters Office on 16th. There's a Worker Rally tomorrow at noon at the Capitol in support of the Wisconsin folks, apparently. I dropped by to see if they had a specific sign I'd seen from a Cleveland protest on You Tube yesterday